In Ponferrada there is a Templar Castle. It was great fun to walk around a castle like it was the most normal thing to have in the middle of the city. One of the events we attended was in the castle itself, so I got to take some pictures on the internal grounds too.

We arrived in Ponferrada early in the morning and sat tiredly in the hotel lobby until our room was ready. (The staff were amazing – brought us wonderful coffee and fruits and kept apologizing that the room wasn’t ready despite us arriving before most people would even be up!)

When we finally moved out to walk around, we found out there was a festival happening – what timing to catch the final day when we weren’t even aware it existed! It looked like a Renaissance Fair. There was a display of birds including these two rather sarcastic looking owls:

There were also a ton of food vendors. We stopped at this one because it smelled amazing.

This is where we got the delicious festival food I posted earlier (a looong time ago, actually) – and I still have yet to grill jalapenos!